New Rules! Lawndale Mixes It Up For This Year’s Retablo Show

For years and years, Houston’s Lawndale Art Center’s Retablo show (in conjunction with its Día de los Muertos celebration) has been the most open-call-show-all exhibition around. But like most utopian socialist experiments, it gets unwieldy when it gets too big.

Lawndale’s Retablo entrants have traditionally been given out their tins on a first-come, first-served basis, amateurs and professional artists alike. This year, they are changing up the rules. They have no more wall space than in previous years, so they have decided to limit entrants to “approximately 150 works.” Here is Lawndale’s recent statement:

Given the overwhelming demand for participation we are trying something new this year: a lottery-based system whereby everyone can submit their name “into the hat” and participants are chosen on a random basis.